Ryan was one of the researchers who conducted a series of studies that found empirical evidence that fear, anxiety, or hostility toward gay and lesbian people on behalf of seemingly heterosexual people can grow from their own repressed same-sex desires.

“When people are trying to suppress something in themselves, they can find someone else who is expressing that attitude threatening,” said Richard Ryan, a psychology professor at the University of Rochester. “It’s kind of a transfer of self-loathing to loathing of other people who are expressing what you can’t.”